Money
| Helpful habits for giving and saving

by David Skeel Posted 11/08/16, 12:24 pm

Since my Oct. 15 article about having a “money talk” with children, I’ve received lots of emails with money stories and recommendations. The comments and questions are so helpful I can’t resist sharing a few.

Money
| The market is punishing Wells Fargo for creating fake accounts. Will regulators punish the rest of us?

David Skeel | 10/14/16, 01:00 am

Editor’s note: The following article is from the Oct. 29 issue of WORLD Magazine. Right after the issue went to press on Wednesday, Oct. 12, Wells Fargo announced that CEO John Stumpf was retiring effective immediately and relinquishing his title as chairman and that COO Tim Sloan will become CEO and Stephen Sanger will serve as the board’s non-executive chairman.

Money
| Take time to help your children make sense of their dollars

David Skeel | 9/30/16, 01:00 am

The daughter of a family friend got zapped with several months of interest charges on her credit card recently and couldn’t understand why. She paid the “minimum payment due” every month, right on time. So why were they charging her interest?

That’s when I realized that parents shouldn’t stop with the birds and the bees. It’s important to give your kids a money talk too.

Money
| The ECCU hopes to pull up from a downgrade

William McCleery | 9/02/16, 01:00 am

The past decade has been a struggle for the California-based Evangelical Christian Credit Union, which provides financial banking services to churches, Christian organizations, missionaries, and consumers across the United States.

Last year the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) downgraded the ECCU to “adequately capitalized” from the more desirable designation of “well capitalized” (defined as having a 7 percent or higher net worth ratio).

Money
| Reining in the practice of high-interest payday lending

| 7/22/16, 01:00 am

Since its creation in 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stuck its nose in every imaginable issue involving consumer finance, and even, as I recently noted on this page, in some issues that don’t. The consumer bureau has now released a payday lending proposal that looks like another example of regulators gone amok. But this time they may be on the right track.

Money
| When hiring financial help, don’t fall for ‘the Jesus card’

David L. Bahnsen | 7/08/16, 01:00 am

If you’re a Christian, you’re also a potential target of affinity fraud—what occurs when a financial adviser uses a profession of faith in Christ to worm his way into your confidence. That’s what happened recently to high-profile pro athletes, including San Francisco Giants pitcher Jake Peavy and Denver Broncos quarterback Mark Sanchez. They and others allegedly lost more than $30 million.

Money
| A scandal involving an online lender jeopardizes an important new industry

David Skeel | 6/10/16, 01:00 am

These aren’t the best of days for the online lending industry. Renaud Laplanche, the founder of industry leader Lending Club, resigned as CEO in May after news surfaced that Lending Club had misrepresented its lending practices. The next day, the U.S. Treasury Department released a report calling for greater scrutiny of the rapidly growing industry.

Before barging in with new restrictions, regulators should take a deep breath and count to 10.

Money
| Courts finally begin to rein in financial regulators

David Skeel | 5/13/16, 01:00 am

For the past six years, Washington bureaucrats have been rolling out tens of thousands of pages of new regulations implementing the 2010 financial reforms known as the Dodd-Frank Act. By one estimate, their handiwork had inflicted $24 billion in costs on American businesses as of last summer.

But the first hints are emerging that enough is finally enough. In recent weeks, several federal courts have chastised regulators for trying to grab even more power than the Dodd-Frank Act gave them.